Students and activists staged several demonstrations in Ithaca, NY last week to pressure Cornell’s Board of Trustees into divestment from fossil fuels. With dramatic flair borrowed from divestment movement founder Bill McKibben, Climate Justice Cornell (CJC) protestors staged a mock wedding between the university and the fossil fuel industry, blocked traffic for several hours and a dozen were arrested in downtown Ithaca for occupying a local Chase bank.
Good for generating a few headlines, but what about actual divestment?
While CJC succeeded at blocking traffic, the group has failed to convince anyone that the university should change its previous standing on divestment. In 2016, the Cornell University Board of Trustees refused to sell its oil assets and instead laid out new guidelines for divesting from companies for “socially responsible” reasons. According to Cornell University Professor Earth and Atmospheric Sciences professor Larry Brown in the Cornell Sun:
“[The resolution to divest] undermines the most precious asset a university has in addressing any controversial issue: its reputation as an unbiased source of scientific knowledge. [Divestment] only serves to reduce the incentive of the fossil fuel industry to engage with Cornell faculty in any meaningful way. We all owe our current standard of living and likely our very existence to the inexpensive energy that the fossil fuel industry has provided over the past century.”
The administration ultimately decided that fossil fuel production was not on par with their “morally reprehensible” standard for divesting—which includes “apartheid, genocide, human trafficking, slavery or systemic cruelty to children, including violation of child labor laws.” In the announcement, Chairman of the Cornell Board of Trustees Robert Harrison said, “Other avenues besides divestiture may be more effective and not merely symbolic.”
Similar to other Ivy League schools that rejected divestment, Cornell instead pursued engagement, research, education and other real, tangible solutions to address climate concerns that were not merely political instruments. Cornell also sends students to participate in a Shell-sponsored training, the Basic Offshore Operations Simulator Training Program (BOOST). As one student commented, “It provided us with a perfect example of how we can apply engineering to practice.”
Now, the school is once again grappling with debate over divestment as the Cornell Faculty Senate prepares to vote on a resolution at its next meeting on March 11. This vote is taking place alongside similar divestment votes from the Employee Assembly, Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, University Assembly and Student Assembly. If all five bodies vote to divest, the decision moves to the Board of Trustees to deliberate on March 20. According to the Cornell Sun, if any of the five assemblies fail to pass the resolution, the topic can still be brought to the Board of Trustees if President Martha E. Pollack decides to raise the issue.
Though tension and anticipation surrounding the upcoming vote is understandable, nothing has changed since 2016. At the time of initial rejection, Cornell University officials also argued universities should be sources of knowledge and endowments, provisions to further that quest for knowledge.
“Cornell’s overriding responsibility is to maintain itself as a neutral forum for analysis, debate and the search for truth,” Donald Opatrny, chair of the board’s Investment Committee, said in a statement. “The university’s endowment must not be regarded primarily as an instrument of political or social power; its principal purpose is to provide income for the advancement of the university’s educational objectives.”
Cornell University’s endowment is still best used to further the educational pursuits of its students and divestment does not help that effort. In fact, divesting from fossil fuels would cost Cornell $24 million in investments.
A feel-good measure, slacktivism or empty gesture – call it what you wish. Divestment remains a costly, unviable solution for supporting the environment and Cornell University would be best served rejecting it…again.
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